BlogMaps – Geographic Pinpoint Maps for Blogs
A few days ago, I noticed a BlogMap in the righthand column of Robert Scoble’s blog – I don’t see it there now, so perhaps he was just experimenting with it. But, the Blogmap immediately appealed to me as a cool mashup concept, and a nice enhancement for locally-oriented blogs.
If you operate a blog that’s about a specific geographic location, I think addition of a Blog Map to your layout could be a great feature. The BlogMap shows a small map image which has your blog pinpointed on it, and a link to all the other local blogs in your area.
If you use this, I suggest you be careful about using your home address for the map pinpoint, since this could introduce negative factors, personal security-wise. Instead, use a nearby address, or use your work address.
It took me about one minute to set up this BlogMap for Natural Search Blog:
If you operate a blog that is about your local area, I also suggest using the hCard Microformat in your site design in order to best optimize for local search engines, though blog search engines likely haven’t set up special algorithms for locality specification yet. I previously blogged about how to use microformats to optimize for local search.
Another option BlogMaps offers is to just display a button that displays the number of Bloggers nearby, hyperlinked to a list of them – something you could use if your were concerned about displaying your location. They also offer a button for “your local opml”.
The Blogmap interface is very elegantly done – simple, and easy-to-use. No surprise that this was developed by one of the primary Microsoft Virtual Earth developers, Chandu Thota. Chandu just recently left Microsoft, and I’d bet they’ll miss him.
One suggestion to Chandu: it’d be really cool if you offered the option for bloggers to display the larger map that pinpoints all the top bloggers in your mapped area. I know he may’ve avoided doing this because of the cost of the maps that would need to be delivered. The way around this might be to offer this add-on service for users who wish to pay a subscription fee.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 02/16/2007
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Filed under: Blog Optimization, Local Search Optimization, Maps Blog Optimization, Blogmaps, Local Search Optimization, Maps
KFC Ad Targeting Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, and MSN Earth
KFC just constructed a giant ad of their logo/mascot, Colonel Saunders, out in the Nevada desert, in order to “make it viewable from space”. The ad was intentionally constructed near Area 51, the secretive military site that many UFO conspiracy theorists claim to be a hotbed for military testing of alien technologies. Their press release states:
“The Colonel Sanders ‘astrovertisement’ was built in Rachel, Nevada, the ‘UFO Capital of the World’, just off the world’s only extraterrestrial Highway, in the infamous Area 51.”
Here’s a Google video of its construction.
Aside from all their jokes about advertising to space aliens, KFC has actually constructed something that will show up in the satellite pix that many are viewing through Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, and MSN Live Maps.
For a fun bit of linkbait, the ad’s website allows one to search around for a hidden message by zooming in and panning around. Finding the message allows one to win a free sandwich.
Now, I’ve joked before about optimizing roof ads for Google Maps, but this gargantuan Colonel ad is no joke — this took some serious money to construct! One of my friends who works for Yum! Brands’ corporate offices remarked that she could now see why their executives were pushing so heavily for cost-cutting — they’re spending tons on marketing to space aliens!
Jokes aside, this type of advertisement may become increasingly serious business as more and more businesses target people who are browsing around viewing satellite pictures through Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, and MSN Live Maps. This sort of thing is being called “mapvertising” or “roofvertising”.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 11/17/2006
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Filed under: Advertising, Maps, Marketing Map-Advertising, Mapvertising, Rooftop-Ads, Roofvertising, Space-Ad
Flickr Adds Geotagging Features
In a move that proves that the people behind flickr are still channeling the Web 2.0 mass conscious, flickr announced this week that they’re adding Geotagging features to their already-robust suite of image management products.
As you may recall, I previously blogged a bit about the rise of geotagging, particularly geotagging of photos, and I had said that it seemed to be a really strong idea with a lot of potential uses. It’s gratifying to see that a service like flickr (and a company like Yahoo!) also believes that it will be strategically beneficial.
The number of people who have been geotagging or who even know about it is likely a relatively low percentage of the online populace, I’d guess (partly for the reason that most people don’t have a GPS device to tell them a location’s longitude and latitude). Now that a top-ranked photo site is supporting it expressly, droves of users will become educated about it, and experiment with it. By doing this, flickr is propelling the trend into the mainstream, increasing the likelihood that it’ll be more widely adopted.
Flickr’s new geotagging utilities were built by mashing-up their image management utilities with Yahoo! Maps, allowing users to drag pix onto a mapped location of where the image was taken in order to associate the photo with the geotag. Also, it appears that users could now use a graphic map as a navigational interface to browse geographic locations and then pull up any publicly-available photos associated with that location. Read on for more info.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 09/01/2006
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Filed under: Content Optimization, Image Optimization, Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Maps, Yahoo flickr, GeoTagging, geotags, image-search, images, Yahoo
Google Maps for Europe & the Rise of GeoTagging
A couple of weeks ago when I was writing the joke article on optimizing roof ads for Google Maps, I happened across this weird satellite picture when browsing the downtown area of my city, Dallas:
(This weird situation of buildings apparently leaning into one another is caused when two or more satellite pictures, each taken at different angles to the buildings, are stitched together. This phenomenon is referred to colloquially as the “Google Escher Effect”.)
I thought it was particularly amusing, so I posted the screen capture to my account on Flickr, and then sent it out to a few friends, and lazily posted it to a number of groups in Flickr that would have an interest in the pic. When researching appropriate related groups in Flickr, I noticed that there are quite a few groups dedicated to “GeoTagging” — this new and rising trend is something that’s got a lot of potential which businesses involved in local search may not be aware of yet, so I thought I’d mention just a few details and ideas on the subject in conjunction with Google Maps expanding their level of detail for European maps.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/26/2006
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Maps GeoTagging, Google, Google-Maps, internet-trends
Google Maps
Geez, I just posted an amalgamation of Google news, then a day later they launch another new service — Google Maps. I can’t seem to keep up with all the cool stuff that Google Labs pumps out. I love the way you can pan around by clicking and dragging with the mouse. Check it out!
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Posted by stephan of stephan on 02/08/2005
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Filed under: Google, Local Search, Maps Google, Google-Maps, Local Search, Maps
